Unvanquished Forum

Hey everyone. I used to play Tremulous a few years ago, I was never famous or anything but I did play a bunch and was part of clan Zero Risk for a while for what it's worth. I recently decided to see if anybody is still playing, got my client all set up again (even set up a server for the hell of it, now that I have the knowledge and the means I lacked when I was playing years ago) and played a few matches and then I learned about Unvanquished. I've skimmed through the wiki and played a few games on the training server to try it out now and I am impressed and glad that people are still playing and building games like this. Thank you!

One of the first things I tried in Unvanquished was importing my bind cfgs from Tremulous. I read on the wiki that some commands have changed names, and I understand that buildings, equipment, and evolution have also changed. There's also a lot that seems pretty much identical to Tremulous. It occurred to me that a guide/reference which highlights and explains the differences - a feature comparison matrix maybe - would be very helpful to me and maybe other former Tremulous players wanting to try out Unvanquished.

(It might even be possible to come up with a script to convert Tremulous configs to Unvanquished, although that may be impractical.)

Does this already exist? If not, is it something you think would be useful?

Binds are an elitist cheat and hack and should be removed, and the console should be removed as well and only the GUI should be kept. Binds give people who know console an unfair advantage and keep developers from making good GUIs because "why make good GUI if players can use binds anyway". Please, for the sake of new players and game's health, don't use binds.

Hey peace, welcome to the forums! I think there are some information on the wiki, for example there are two pages about cvar changes (1, 2) and a general page about keybindings. I don't think there's a page specifically about changed bindings (yet). Also, the wiki was unmaintained for a while so the information may be a bit out of date, too.

lamefun, please don't troll people who ask for support.

Viech wrote:

lamefun, please don't troll people who ask for support.

Why do you like to perpetuate elitism so much?

lamefun wrote:

Binds give people who know console an unfair advantage

I have to disagree...everybody has the same opportunity to learn so it's fair. I do think the "lowest common denominator" UX strategy is effective for mass markets like the app store but I feel like an OSS quake-based twitch shooter should let you under the hood. It's not like binds give you access to equipment or features you wouldn't otherwise be able to see, they just let you customize how you want to control those resources. Anyway I didn't mean to start an argument for or against custom keybinds, they were part of Tremulous and they're part of Unvanquished now. I just want to more easily see the commonalities and differences.

lamefun wrote:

and keep developers from making good GUIs because "why make good GUI if players can use binds anyway".

Wow, really? I've never heard this argument before. Do you have any examples of a Tremulous or Unvanquished developer using the fact that some players use custom keybinds as a reason to slow/stop GUI development?

lamefun wrote:

Why do you like to perpetuate elitism so much?

Feel free to call it elitism, I look at it as a gaming genre that considers skill and commitment to be relevant parameters. I would endorse your argument in a world where most of the games were like Unvanquished but this genre marks something that can hardly be marketed or monetized and thus it was put into a niche during the last decade. If we tried to create a shooter with a compressed skill gap we'd need to compete on a level where mostly graphics matters and games are short-lived and interchangeable. The first bit we simply can't do, the other bit we don't want to. I prefer to create a game that makes players commit to it. This requires a skill gap and, if you want so, players who form an elite because of the countless hours they spend on learning and optimizing. I believe that being good in a game only feels good if you commited to it.

Note that this is a response to your elitism reproach. I agree that we need to make the game as accessible as possible to beginners, which requires a good UI and proper default bindings. You're also right that developers tend to blind themselves by using the advanced configurations instead of the basic ones. Improving this isn't our greatest priority though as we can, up to beta and maybe a little beyond, remain in a state where experience with quake-like games is a requirement to get into the game. This is part of the reason why we didn't yet advertise the game either.

Viech wrote:

Feel free to call it elitism, I look at it as a gaming genre that considers skill and commitment to be relevant parameters. I would endorse your argument in a world where most of the games were like Unvanquished but this genre marks something that can hardly be marketed or monetized and thus it was put into a niche during the last decade. If we tried to create a shooter with a compressed skill gap we'd need to compete on a level where mostly graphics matters and games are short-lived and interchangeable. The first bit we simply can't do, the other bit we don't want to. I prefer to create a game that makes players commit to it. This requires a skill gap and, if you want so, players who form an elite because of the countless hours they spend on learning and optimizing. I believe that being good in a game only feels good if you commited to it.

I'm not against skillful games, I'm against bullshit "skills" like floor headbite and strafejumping that penalize new players and new players only. Insistence on these just shows fear of progress and lack of imagination.

lamefun wrote:

I'm not against skillful games, I'm against bullshit "skills" like floor headbite and strafejumping that penalize new players and new players only. Insistence on these just shows fear of progress and lack of imagination.

"binds are an elitist cheat"
and eliminate strafjumping because it penalizes people who suck at the game and don't know how to do it...

vape wrote:

...

Sigh... Yet another soul has been claimed by Medusa Gorgon...

Lamefun, what do you propose as a replacement for strafejumping and floor headbite?